Musician to be reunited with his rare violin

A Michigan City, Ind., musician plans to meet with police Monday to pick up the rare violin he reported stolen from the back seat of his car a week ago.

The instrument, made in 1892 by Jerome Squier in Boston, has been valued at $100,000 because of its superior sound quality, said violinist Nicolas Orbovich.

"It's got this tremendous balance of different characteristics," said Orbovich, 42, a violinist with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. "You don't want a violin that has too much 'brightness,' or what you might call stridence or tinniness. And you don't want it too mellow either. You don't want it too much either way."

He bought the violin for $2,000 in 1985 when he was a student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

"Back then, as a student, I didn't have a penny, and $2,000 might as well have been $2 million," he recalled. He managed to scrape together the money and has never owned another violin .

A professor of his found it in a Boston violin shop. Orbovich said it was an extremely good deal at the time, and that the value has appreciated because the sound quality of the instrument has improved over the years.

Michigan City police recovered it with the help of a Lake Station, Ind., pawn shop, said Orbovich's wife, Sunny.

"We will know more [Monday]," she said. "He got a call from the police Saturday morning that it had been found."

Orbovich reported the instrument stolen from his car Nov. 17. The unlocked vehicle was in a Wal-Mart parking lot for about five minutes, and when the musician returned, he discovered that the violin was missing.